"Follow the guards not the sat-navs"

“What is your favourite part of the Ploughing?” I ask. “The session on the Thursday night when it’s over,” says Tom. We both laugh. But I get it. Tom Kelly has been site manager for the Ploughing for the last 12 years and, in that time, has overseen the event taking place in five locations. He and his colleague, Sean Byrne, who is the exhibition supervisor, have the pleasure of ‘dealing with all the problems’, he says, laughing. But, I sense that he is not joking one bit.
The two of them oversee the commencement of each event set up, and they steer their own and external teams, as required – hundreds of people, thousands of hours, many months – in advance of the three-day championships. This year, they are joined by the event medic and health and safety officer, Tony Kelly. “The three stooges,” Tom jokes.
This year also marks the third consecutive year that the 600-acre Ratheniska site is hosting the Ploughing – and six years in total that the event has been staged there in the Ploughing’s history. The familiarity of such a site has its advantages, but 2024 marks three strikes, and they are out for 2025. Three years is as much as you can ask of a site and its land, and of a location, Tom says. “It is a huge advantage from the point of view of traffic management and parking. You get to know the land – we got to know it very well last year – and where the problem areas are. So, in those ways it is an advantage but in other ways it isn’t.”

Weather woes

The scale of an event like the Ploughing takes its toll on the land but add to that a disastrously wet year, and it really compounds matters. “We spent the whole winter, ploughing the place up, reseeding it, trying to get it ready again for this year. You are going back into a site that has taken a battering for a year or two beforehand. And then, this was a difficult winter, weatherwise, so it was a worry. We got about two thirds of it [the Ratheniska site] sown back in the autumn, despite the weather and we got the last 30 acres done in April. We have an excellent contractor, Pat Ramsbottom, and he prioritises us [at short notice]. We have great people we can call on.”
Last year’s show was subjected to some of the worst weather conditions in years, Tom recalls. Day one saw up to 70,000 people arrive to and survive a mud-fest. The sun eventually got there on day two, and things had dried up a lot by the third day, but the damage had been done by the miserable opening-day weather. Getting the ground ready for the following year’s event is a major priority. It is the foundation upon which the Ploughing is built. “The third year is hard on us anyway, regardless of the weather. After the first year, you will have a few repair jobs, after the second it tends to get badly battered in certain areas. You use the winter to do the bigger structural jobs and drainage, for example. This year, we have changed the layout of the event by turning the entire site around by 90 degrees. But after three years, you have to give the land a rest,” says Tom.

Forget about the sat-navs

The coordination and organisation of an event like the the Ploughing takes considerable time. The 2025 event is moving to a new destination, and is already in the early stages of planning, Tom says, although his lips were tightly sealed as to where it will take place. “You may ask Anna May for the answer to that question,” he says with a laugh.
“But, generally, planning [for the next one] starts, more or less, during or straight after the last event,” says Tom. “Then, you would have meetings with all the providers of services, the gardaí, you are planning traffic, site layout, car park layout, they are all planned well in advance.”
Traffic and weather are probably the two biggest worries for Tom. There is no controlling one of those things, as we have discussed. And the other? “Well, you can to a point. A lot of work goes into the traffic-management plan,” he says. And great effort has gone into devising six colour-coded routes that will siphon traffic from various parts of the country into the most convenient and relevant car parks. Traffic personnel have been assigned to marshal specific locations so Tom and his team really need the public to work with them on this. “The one thing I want to do is to plead with people to please turn off the sat-navs and instead follow the directions of the gardaí. Sat-navs will see that there is a build-up of traffic in an area and it will direct people around back roads, which we don’t want, and then you end up with traffic coming at you from a direction that you have not planned for. So, follow the guards and turn off the sat-navs. We also have around 350 buses arriving per day and the logistics of that is a bit intense.”

Like building a town

When, jokingly, I suggest that Tom is the man to call when the Olympic games come knocking, he replies, with a laugh: “The Olympics would be a cinch at this stage!” After all, putting on an event like the Ploughing is akin to building an actual town in the middle of a field, such is its scale. Tom adds: “It was the former chief superintendent in Laois-Offaly who likened it to building a city the size of Cork, and then taking it down again.” Putting some of that into perspective, Tom says: “Thirty-five kilometres of road goes down, there are around 100 kilometres of cables for power and broadband. The infrastructure must be there to deliver those to the exhibitors. Not all will require them but the infrastructure is needed, and for water too. You need over 1,000 toilets and then you must get rid of all that sewage and waste every day. You would use about 80,000 gallons of water on the site every day. We need streetlights, we have a hospital on site, 500-600 security personnel. We have aroung 13 generators, and we have enough power to run a small city. It is flabbergasting, the scale of the facilities that are there,” he says.

Sense of accomplishment 

As well as the closing-day session, is there anything else that Tom can get some enjoyment from? “We all get a kick out of putting it together, seeing everything happening over the course of the days, seeing all the people rolling in. If the weather doesn’t cause a major obstacle, it is a pleasure to see all the cogs working and all the plans that we have made come together.” But contingencies are crucial when plans are challenged. “Last year, we had to go to plan Z,” says Tom. “But we have a great relationship with the gardaí, we work closely together, we make each other aware of any changes that are taking place and once you have that, it works well [despite adverse weather/traffic conditions].”

Problem-solving

Without hesitation, Tom answers ‘no’ when asked if he can enjoy some downtime over the three days. “Most years, I wouldn’t even get a chance to get out around the stands. Over the three days, you’d be monitoring car parks, liaising with the gardaí, problem solving because when you have 100,000 people in the one place you will invariably have problems that arise.” Mostly, these are traffic and parking related but sometimes health problems arise too: “You will have the odd heart attack, stroke, or person suffering from exhaustion [if it is too hot]. We have a hospital on site though, so we have all that covered.” And no matter how hard they try to prevent it, people always get lost or forget where they parked the car. “Last year, we had people on around 20 gaiters going around finding these people or helping them find their cars,” says Tom. 

Big changes 

This year marks 93 years of the Ploughing. Ploughing competitions, farming and rural Ireland will always be at its heart but its evolution to an event of mass appeal cannot be denied. “You can buy anything from a car to a combine to an oven. There is some change in the size and scale and variation of stands,” says Tom. “One thing that I found fascinating from last year was that we probably had our smallest crowd in a while, with the weather, but we think there was more business done last year than other years.”
This is all anecdotal, of course, but Tom and Sean spend a lot of time talking to exhibitors and getting feedback and if anyone can take the temperature of the event, it is they. “Last year, we know that some exhibitors sold €1m and €2m over the course of the three days. A lot of people were there just to do business,” he says.
I ask him about the decision of some high-profile companies and organisations not to exhibit at the Ploughing this year and if this is a concern. “Since I have started, I have heard people saying that there aren’t as many tractors and combines and big machinery, and there is some truth to that because a lot of the machinery manufacturers are choosing to have their own private open days on farms where they can invite a very targeted audience. That is just something that we cannot compete with.” But there is plenty of machinery and tractors in attendance, and the machinery side is holding its own, says Tom.

Layout

The layout and location of the stands takes a lot consideration, explains Tom, and the entire exhibition area is set out to optimise footfall for all exhibitors. “You have to be careful to ensure that the crowd can get access to all areas but that not too many people get access to an area all at once. So Sean and the exhibition team have to make sure that every aisle gets a crowd and that people are guided to every aisle and every stand. We must ensure we put some of our bigger stands in an area that will help pull people in a particular direction. We don’t get it 100 per cent right all the time but we do our best, and one of the benefits of having the event in the same spot is that you learn how to do it better, you learn where the congestion spots are, for example, and you can address those.”

Mayhem

Our interview takes place just a few weeks out from the 2024 event, and at that stage, Tom explains what is happening: “All the trackways and electrical work is done – that has to be in place early. The marquees are being built. Shortly, we will be moving on to the car parks, fencing off neighbours’ houses. And what happens after, when it is all over, I ask? “Well, that is pure and utter mayhem,” he says. The deconstruction can take anything up to six weeks. What goes up must come down but that is another day’s problem for Tom and the team. 

Ploughing in numbers:

• 13 generators 
• 13,000 panels for 35km of trackway
• 15km fencing
• 100km cables for broadband
• 1,000 toilets
• 80,000 gallons water/day
• 500-600 guards, stewards, security

Did you know?
Local GAA clubs help to man the car parks and the volunteers use it as an opportunity to raise some money for their clubs.